A paycheck is traditionally a paper document (a cheque) issued by an employer to pay an employee for services rendered. In recent times, the physical paycheck has been increasingly replaced by electronic direct deposit to bank accounts. Such employees may still receive a pay slip, but any attached cheque is marked as non-negotiable and cannot be cashed. Generally, information such as payee, date, memo, etc. are printed on the paycheck. In some cases, the paycheck also has a printed authorized signature instead of being signed by a live person signer.
A pay stub, paystub, payslip, pay advice, or sometimes paycheck stub, is a document an employee receives either as a notice that the direct deposit transaction has gone through, or is attached to their paycheck. It typically details the gross income and all taxes and any other deductions such as retirement plan or pension contributions, insurances, garnishments, or charitable contributions taken out of the gross amount to arrive at the final net amount of the pay, also including the year-to-date totals in some circumstances.
When setting up a company's payroll configuration in a typical payroll software, the payroll software user (e.g., company accountant) is required to manually enter a complete set of company data, including entering federal and state tax information for each employee and for the employer, before the user is able to view a paycheck of any kind for verification purposes. If there is any error in a paycheck due to a data entry or payroll set-up mistake, the user has to go through a lengthy process to correct the mistake and verify that the error no longer shows up in a resultant paycheck.